New supporters

Quote: vastman "It's just my opinion but I really hate price reductions. Free is even worse.
Problem is it isolates those who have already paid the full price for season tickets.

It simply attracts freeloaders. This benefits no one as once people think it's free of dirt cheap they always will. They will resent ever paying full price - thus you have simply devalued the product for no financial gain or long term improvement on crowd figures.

There are only two ways to really promote the club successfully in the long term.

Obviously the most important is on field performances, nothing beats it - it's that simple win a cup and they will turn up. Sign a massive name Aussie, a British RL International or a RU star and you might add 1000 to the gate - for a while at least - it's the oldest trick in the book.

However you can also enhance the experience, it costs but it doesn't cheapen the product - quite the opposite.

The £2 a pint offer is a classic example. The club loses some revenue on the pint but the club gains a reputation as a place to watch Rugby have a few pints at a fair price (probably sells more beer anyway). A T-shirt give away one week, an X-factor reject the next. You just have to be creative.

I'm not against the odd offer like the Salford game, but we need to be very selective and targeted - I like the one we link to mothers day - Ladies day - it actually attracts new people who are possibly not there just for the freebie.

IMHO sport is a product and it has a value and if we value it at £20 it has to be worth it. Unfortunately unlike most other businesses RL clubs cannot guarantee the ultimate buzz, winning. So to counter that we have to glam it up, doubly hard at BV. So for now we will have to be patient and not charge less no matter how grim it gets, so that when we go to Oakwell then Newmarket we can charge the going rate.

Hope that makes sense.'"

i agree and it is a waste of time. probably costs more to print and distribute the free tickets than revenue generated. for example, we admitted this week we gave out 2500 free tickets to local schools so far this season, and only 500 were used - 20% i'd hope that 60-75% would have been achievable but not to be the case.